ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the life and work of German anarchist Gustav Landauer, discussing the theme of Absonderung as a practice of presence. Landauer may be referred to as “mystical anarchist:” political deformations, he argued, were the symptom of spiritlessness. Hence, they could not be solved merely politically. Instead of trying to order the world through politics, he argued, the task was to become the world via the spirit. Landauer was an an-archist in the literal sense of the word: he opposed arche, any system that seeks to restrict the flow of the universe (terminology will be clarified in this chapter) through the individual and thereby separates her own knowledge from her experience. Through Absonderung, the German term for separation or truncation, he argued, this unmediated link could be restored. This insight, however, did not lead to quietism, on the contrary. This chapter also examines Landauer’s concrete suggestions on how to form societies and counter the effects of the state.
